Eugenia Raskopoulos: Vestiges of the Tongue

Published by 
Power Publications
Formist Editions

Runner-up in the Artist-led category of the 2020 AAANZ Best Book Prize 

With recognition for her pioneering practice long overdue, this scholarly monograph is the first survey of one of Australia’s leading photo-media artists, Eugenia Raskopoulos. Raskopoulos’ cultural background has informed more than three decades of inventive, evolving bodies of work that span across video performance, installation and photography.

Born in the Czech Republic to Greek parents before migrating from Greece to Australia in 1963, where she was introduced to English at primary school, Raskopoulos has long sustained a focused and fruitful critique of language. In Vestiges of the Tongue we see her visualising language’s slippages through performances of translation, interrogating words and their impact on the body, and tracing contemporary communication as it enters the realms of data and surveillance.

Early works such as the neon ‘No never means yes’, emblazoned on the wall of a girl’s bedroom, and the performance of the word ‘democracy’, written by the artist’s foot in urine, are just two examples from an oeuvre that, decades on, appears both consistently engaged with the politics of its time and, here reconsidered by ten leading scholars and curators, newly resonant in the social context of today. 

A fine book on the artistic practice of Eugenia Raskopoulos, whose family cultural background and experiences of multicultural Australia informs her interest on a range of issues including the feminine body, language, translation, cultural exchange, knowledge and power. Between sumptuous colour plates of images representative of an artistic practice that prompts critical reflection and response, a collection of engaging and insightful essays by curators and academics brings a scholarly rigour to this high-quality publication that is to be commended for both its aesthetic and intellectual appeal.

—Judges, AAANZ Best Book Prize

CONTRIBUTORS

Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Ann Finegan, Huang Du, Anneke Jaspers, Victoria Lynn, Anne Marsh, Robert Nelson, Nikos Papastergiadis, Isobel Parker Philip, and Eugenia Raskopoulos with Nicholas Tsoutas.

KEY FEATURES

Hardback

ISBN 978-0-909952-81-5

140 colour illustrations

228 pp

300 x 230 mm

Published by